


The Third Fruit

by rosekay



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon, F/M, Genderswap, Season/Series 01
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2011-09-26
Updated: 2011-09-26
Packaged: 2017-10-24 02:07:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/257707
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosekay/pseuds/rosekay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Danny Williams meets Jane Steven McGarrett, and he's not going to win this race. AU, genderswap.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Third Fruit

She had never been stationed in Hawaii, or anywhere where she needed to keep whites on hand, had barely been back at all since the accident. The skies were moody slate and overcast, but the humidity made her dress blues a hot weight, dragging on her skin until it felt like she might sink right through steel into black water. She'd barely slept on the plane, barely breathed when the sweeping ranges and crystal bay had come into view. It had been a long time. The salt air made her think of when her father had been a giant.

The governor's artfully arranged hair was getting a pounding from changeable winds off the bay, but her face was composed, hawkish eyes trained on a target.

"Five languages. Annapolis at the top of your class. Diver certification, five years in naval intelligence. A series of joint operations with the CIA so classified they wouldn't let even me near it." The governor arched a brow at this. The twist of her mouth said that this did not happen particularly often. "I very much doubt that you were part of a Cultural Support Team."

"That would be the army's purview, ma'am." Her voice remained even. Her fingers tightened on the brim of her cover. She stared straight ahead at the white arch of the Arizona.

"You took every certification and advanced training offered to you and tried half a dozen that weren't. You're hungry. I like that in a woman."

"Everyone's a little stupid when they're young."

"You understand what it's like, Commander. Forestalled at every turn, even when you're smarter, stronger, better - "

"Governor."

The woman was shrewd. Her face went from concerned mentor to chilly blank with a flick of her eyes. She didn't waste time on a battle already lost, just absorbed the blow and moved on.

"The Navy - "

"Has never sent me into combat. You know the rules. You're better off with someone experienced in law enforcement."

"No, not the Navy."

So Jameson knew more than she let on. It was time to listen, to gauge her options. She had never liked politics or possessives, and the way the governor said " _my_ island" rankled her in more than the obvious way. She wasn't ready for a battle, too raw and strung out, the threads thin enough to snap, didn't appreciate the way that immunity and means were thrown out there like bones for a dog. Hawaii wasn't big enough for what she needed.

"With me, Commander, what you see is what you get."

She didn’t have the gift for this sort of thing, not when she just wanted to get back to the chase, fingertips itching, eyes salt-stung and dry. She knew better, but it was hard to control the crackle under her skin, the way her chest tightened with unsaid things. Her mother used to warn her when she got into moods like this, a firm hand on her arm and eyebrows raised. _Just swallow it if you can't think straight_. It had been a long time though since her mother had told her much of anything at all.

"Here's what I see—a desperate politician with an election year coming up, who needs the PR. Maybe you were a little hard on abortion or you campaigned a little too aggressively, alienated the hippies along with the housewives, so all the better if that PR has a rack and a rank." She enjoyed the bare flinch that one got. "And you brought me here to Pearl Harbor, where my grandfather was killed, hoping what? That I might feel a sense of responsibility? Duty to my family, my country? Is that about right?"

Jameson started to equivocate. Her carefully sympathetic expression was suddenly intolerable.

"I'm not your GI Jane experiment, Governor. I need to catch Hesse. I'm only here to bury my father."

She didn't even have time for that.

"I can _help_ you."

The woman put on a good show—elegant in a way that she had never felt in her bones, wearing the power lightly but full of intent—but she was dry-eyed and brittle-feeling, wasn't in the mood for much besides blood.

"Pass."

\--

Danny didn't like paradise. In fact, he would have given a hell of a lot to get out. Red tape at every turn. And everyone giving him a slightly pitying look every time he tried to do anything more complicated than grab coffee. He wasn't even much good at that. Didn't have the palate, Meka would say, shaking his head.

The McGarrett case made him uneasy, every cop letting him do his own thing when they should have been chomping at the bit for the lead. Danny hated not knowing when something was really up or if it was just another charming example of island laissez faire. He didn't like driving anxious. He didn't like flying solo. He didn't like risking his life in a place where he'd never walked a beat. But he'd done plenty of all three. That's what he'd bought, the price of being more than just a footnote in his daughter's life.

The house looked lonely in its patch by the water. By all accounts the old man had preferred to keep to himself towards the end. It made him grateful for Grace and even for Rachel, who for all her sharp tongue and casual acrimony, would never have forgotten him here in some airy, quiet bungalow away from everything he did and loved.

The place was so utterly silent that at first he thought he'd hallucinated the sounds in the garage. The ubiquitous ocean shush shush and quiet midday calm still threw him off. He was painfully reminded every day that he wasn't on home turf, that his instincts might fail him. He opened his eyes to an uneasy peace that took root and routinely overstayed its welcome. The boards creaked on his way to the back entrance. He was cautious, the muscles in the back of his neck and forearms tense. His eyes had to adjust to the dim light inside, the island's perpetual warm glow like a touch that lingered too long in his head. It took him a minute to process the figure facing him, his gun arm reacting before his brain could.

She was tall, maybe a shade taller than he was, to his irritation. Slate gray eyes that caught the snatches of light shading in through the windows. Tension jumped like a live wire in a jawline that was a little too strong to be delicate. There was nothing delicate about the way the she held her gun. Military issue, and at this range, even a tac vest would be next to useless.

She played a good game with the toolbox, but when she evoked the old man's name, something tired but not fragile in those cool eyes, part of Danny wanted to just crawl home and call it a day. He as a rule didn't like talking distraught relatives through the aftermath. It always brought the inevitable Grace hypothetical, which made Danny's breath catch with sour terror before the thought finished processing. And your average relative wasn't a long length of tensed muscle, military bearing, and some kind of chip on the shoulder judging by the stubborn twist to her mouth.

She was at least polite enough not to comment when Danny realized he was probably holding his badge backwards, leather the wrong feel against his fingers and most of his attention trained on the curl of her fingers on metal.

The rank didn't surprise him, except that she maybe looked a little young for it, or maybe Danny had better things to do than figure out the vagaries of ordered brass. The way she tried to bull through his crime scene ticked off every sense of decorum he had. She was taking none of his attempts to talk her down, and she _would not stop moving_. It made Danny a little dizzy just following her, his eyes tracking the tool box, his evidence, she was hefting around with no apparent sign of effort.

By the time Governor Jameson's tinny voice started echoing in the dingy space, all Danny wanted was to wake up from this headache. The day had started too warm and a little frustrating, like any other, and now it was careening who knows where. Despite Rachel's snipes, he wasn't a control freak, but could you really blame a guy for wanting a little order in his life? A hint of the predictable. He still hadn't wrapped his mind around the fact that he was pretty sure McGarrett's daughter had called herself _Steve_ until she began, half-turned away from him like that made a difference in this farce of a situation, "I, Jane Steven McGarrett, do solemnly declare . . ."

The old man must have been a doozy to stick his daughter with that one. He wondered if she'd have gone by plain Jane if not for the military background, though there was absolutely nothing plain about her. Ten minutes in, and Danny's eyes were already struggling to relocate themselves from the firm curve of her ass beneath worn cargoes; his rational brain was trying to convince the rest of him that strangling her was not an acceptable resolution to the problem. Pig, Rachel would have said, but Rachel had been the one to teach him the thin line between fighting and fucking. Danny had enough on his plate as it was, with the department and the magic hat that Step-Stan apparently kept on hand to buy people's affections. He didn't need another complication.

Jane, or _Steve_ , wheeled around on him, toolbox firmly in hand. She had some kind of strut going, hip-slung and unselfconscious. Danny wanted to smack the self-satisfied grin off her face.

"Now it's my investigation."

\--

No one advertised how often it rained in the post cards. Danny hated the sloshy feeling that stuck with him afterward. His shirts never held a straight edge, collars a little limp, sleeves crinkled by how often he found himself rolling them up. It was tolerable though, even peaceful, being on the other side, the wide windows that were the apartment's one real selling point gleaming like faded crystal, water streaking its face. He was never sure where to put himself in a place this small, everything within easy reach, all his spaces mixed up in one another. The chief had made it clear that the McGarrett case was priority, but had offered little help since. Meka did what he could, but everyone else had all but stonewalled him, and now the whole thing was apparently out of his hands just when he'd gotten a break with the ballistics hit. The daughter's file didn't offer up anything more than exemplary record after exemplary record, with large portions restricted way beyond Danny's pay-grade. She had no natural jurisdiction here, had just bulldozed her way in to the first major investigation he'd been given. It was purely personal, and Danny hated personal. It ate away at your judgment, made you stupid. It was a hell of a list of qualifications that she had going, and some small part of Danny thought that he wouldn't trust himself either if he'd spent the last decade or so traipsing around the world with encryption-grade military technology and a big gun. Just thinking about it was a headache, but the steady beat of the rain was comforting, and he almost dozed off at his desk before the rumble of an engine outside startled him upright.

A peak out the window confirmed his suspicions. He briefly considered playing dead and pretending he was out, but she had probably been trained to smell the deceit or something. Instead he raked a hand through his hair and did his best to look nonchalant as he swung the door open.

The insane people on this island regularly thought that shirts, files, and other flimsy things were appropriate and functional substitutions for umbrellas, and it looked like McGarrett was no exception. Danny made himself look away from the way the rain made her over shirt cling to her straight shoulders and the wet dark weight of her lashes against her cheeks when she glanced down before looking up at him, direct and calculating, the color of her eyes muddied by the dim skies and feeble light.

"I swung by your precinct and your captain told me that you'd requested a file on Fred Doran. Talk."

Later Danny would learn that her voice mail sounded exactly the same. Terse and a little impatient that she needed the courtesy of a lead-in at all. She didn't waste a breath, and the presumption got under his skin. Like Danny was a dog waiting to be brought to heel, to be tossed aside one minute and coaxed back the next.

She didn't bat an eyelash at his sarcasm though, just raised one straight, dark brow. She might as well have shouted "stay."

Danny rankled at the dismissive way her eyes raked over the apartment. The smile that softened her mouth when she saw Gracie's photo took years off her face though; it was an unexpectedly sweet grin, a little guileless. She got back to the business of pissing him off right away.

Danny has to admit that she had him exact with the lack of a ring and the mess of a place. He just hoped the piles of paperwork he'd shoved haphazardly behind his shelves weren't visible from where she was standing. Fresh eyes, she said, which meant she didn't trust someone in HPD. It put his assignment to John McGarrett's case in interesting perspective.

The wheels were clearly turning behind shuttered eyes, and Danny felt obligated to reiterate, "What part of 'this isn't my case anymore' do you not get?"

The soft smile had vanished so thoroughly there was no evidence it had ever come near her face. The smirk she wore now made Danny want to punch a wall. Maybe two. Everyone was so laid-back in this fruit basket of a place that he'd rarely gotten so worked up ad hominem in the last year or so. It seemed McGarrett was the exception to a lot of things.

"The Governor gave me jurisdiction, and I'm making you my partner."

Right, it wasn't like Danny deserved any agency _in his own life_ or anything. He'd been in arguments like this before, with his old captain, with Rachel, and he knew the war was already a foregone conclusion, treaties signed, dotted i's, crossed t's, the works. The nonchalance of her voice only badly hid the straightforward intent in her eyes; she was already about six moves ahead of Danny, everything painstakingly etched out on a couple feet of blueprint, and there was shit he could do about it.

She paused in his door frame, the hesitant light spiking through the clouds making her glow a little bit. Danny should just blind himself now while he had the chance, save himself some pain.

There was a definite edge to her face when she looked back. Danny didn't like it one bit.

"Don't worry - we're gonna get along great."

Maybe three walls.

\--

Steve looked intrigued when Rachel called and Danny wanted to stuff the phone deep beneath the seat. She wasn't making things easy sprawled in the passenger's seat, fabric tight across lean thighs, the shifting light creating interesting valleys and shadows in the stupidly golden-tan expanse where the collar of her white tank dipped. Danny was honest enough to admit that he'd been in dog mode since coming to this place, full of simmering resentment of Step-Stan's mansion, the bed he shared with Rachel every night. The miles of exposed flesh and relaxed smiles that seemed to greet him at every turn made it easy to focus on the physical and not the the yawning abyss of leaving behind everyone he knew. The physical part had never been the trouble between him and Rachel.

He very simply just wanted to get one back, enjoy the benefits of a free man in paradise. His old partner acted like he was crazy when Danny grunted a vague _ok_ to the inevitable _how you holding up? How's Eden?_ He wanted a PowerPoint, a Technicolor catalog, a goddamn reenactment of exotic exploits on the beach, and Danny usually answered with a curt _fuck you_ and a misdirect.

Steve had the exact same slightly incredulous tone of voice when she interrogated him about not liking the beach. Danny imagined Kowalski's reaction if he could see him now, seething on the driver's side while miles of gorgeous coastline flashed by and the deeply irritating centerfold of some asshole's military fetish mag slouched beside him, all coiled muscle and sly mouth, taking altogether too much interest in Gracie's nickname for his continued zen.

The fun about Rachel in the early days had been the challenge of unwrapping her. She wore her chilly British reserve like armor, all clipped syllables and tempting flashes of wicked wit. Danny had always been a fastidious dresser. He would have loved to look casually elegant after rolling out of bed, but he needed about six more inches to manage that. Rachel, however, was impeccable. He remembered the daily thrill of seeing what she'd put together. Always tasteful, not an element out of place. She favored pencil skirts and soft shirts with just enough texture to hint at what was beneath, heels that made Danny feel just a little bit inadequate and a lot hot under the collar at the way they molded her slender ankles and calves. Rachel never lost control of an inch of herself. It drove him insane.

Steve had poured herself into Danny's passenger seat with all the graciousness of a sack of potatoes. She didn't look like she'd ever thought about the merits of pearls versus diamonds or the best silhouette to accentuate her waist. Danny almost snorted to himself imagining her spritzing perfume in front of a mirror. She seemed more like the type who would time herself stripping guns before a night out, before turning up the next day to be the worst backseat driver, calling late turns and letting the sun wander distractingly down the length of her.

Danny was sufficiently distracted that the alarm bells only started going off when they were easing into the dirt driveway and he realized there'd been no stop, no call to HPD, just Steve rolling nonchalantly out of her side, clipping a magazine in. In the middle of his rant, Danny realized that Steve had the exact expression on her face that Rachel wore when she wanted Danny to "stop being such a fishwife, really." Maybe it was slightly less severe, but that didn't mean Danny was any less screwed. He said as much, loudly, just to make sure Steve wasn't missing out on his extremely rational concerns.

"Danny," She said in a voice so falsely sweet he wanted to check for cavities, "You're the back-up."

He only had a minute to contemplate how much he hated her at this very moment before he was out of the car and on his way to getting shot out of a window. Eighty-seven cases neatly closed and under his arm, and he'd never taken fire this quickly. Getting up from these things never got easier. The glass crunching beneath his shoes and the flare of fire in his arm didn't help. He needed a minute to orient himself before he noticed that Doran and McGarrett were both nowhere in sight. The heat was closing like a trap, his arm was throbbing, and he was looking at a foot race to god knows where courtesy of Commander You're the Backup. He was going to kill her.

The trail wasn't hard to pick up, scattered throngs of panicked civilians and overturned street carts, though he half lucked into his vantage point behind some cover. Doran had the record of a wild card, hopped up half the time and eminently unstable. Danny was relieved that McGarrett at least had the sense to recognize a wild animal when she saw one. The civilian was struggling weakly, clearly terrified, no safe bet on where she'd turn if things got hairy. She trembled with every scream Doran unleashed. Danny was willing to bet he was riding high right now, fingers twitch on his machinery. He was ready to blow any minute, nothing reasonable about the gleam in his eyes or the way he was trained on McGarrett.

McGarrett, who was actually lowering her hands, muzzle going up in concession. Danny cursed, because he could _see_ the shot, both his own, easy from Doran's blind spot, and Doran's, a straight hit that would have bloodied up McGarrett's mysteriously still pristine tank pretty quickly, taken her down like so much easy game. Wasn’t she trained for this sort of thing? Instilled with some sort of protective instinct? He couldn’t imagine the old man whose portrait had emerged from Danny’s investigation being calm and okay with his daughter throwing herself into firefights and hostage situations with no more forethought than you’d give to feeding the neighborhood stray. Cop’s daughters, in Danny experience, and in Grace’s experience (he was going to make sure of that in ironclad terms), had some kind of caution drummed into them, had a sense of the father waiting in the wings, the one who saw enough of this kind of thing at work and selfishly didn’t want to worry at home.

The low-level headache he’d been nursing since McGarrett had turned up in the rain was going at full blast now, and his arm reminded him that hey—an ambulance and a couple cleanup cruisers might not be amiss at this juncture. He didn’t even want to think about the paperwork involved with multiple points of property damage, multiple weapons discharged, and a perp taken down on first contact. McGarrett, apparently determined to play military robot, saw no rational person need to take a couple minutes after a near-death experience and had already disappeared, leaving all the smoking rubble, metaphorical and otherwise, for Danny to deal with. He was starting to sense a pattern.

It wasn’t until a sympathetic paramedic was whistling over the graze, easing Danny’s sleeve back over the neat job he’d made of it, that he spotted McGarrett bent over a frail slip of a girl wrapped in a trauma blanket. He felt like he’d been run over by an armored truck, and she still looked stupidly put together, cargo pants only a little dustier for wear, her over shirt peaking out from under the girl’s blanket (apparently never let it be said that Jane Steven McGarrett wasn’t a gentleman or anything), and white tank highlighting the dark of her hair and the gold of her shoulders. The breeze carried back gentle snatches of what sounded like Mandarin, and of course _Steve_ would also be fluent in who knew how many languages, the better to slip into whatever war zones the United States military or the CIA or whoever would deny until they were blue in the face.

“Where did they ship _you_ in from, brah?”

Danny allowed himself a sigh. “That obvious?”

The paramedic nodded at where his tie was crumpled into one shirt pocket. He had to roll his eyes—Jesus Christ would he never get a break on the thing. As if on cue, Doran's girlfriend was wrestled past by a uniform, who was admirably composed in the face of her choice words for Danny.

McGarrett deigned to come over and brief him on what she'd found out from the girl. He cut a glance toward the figure huddled in the ambulance, her sheet of tangled dark hair, the bird-sharp shoulders. It went a long way toward explaining the expression on McGarrett's face. Doran had been involved in illegal trafficking, stripping people of their cash in exchange for a handful of empty promises and their daughters sold into prostitution. This wasn't a perp who would be bent into a confession or talked down, which made it all the more infuriating that McGarrett had taken the risk at all, put Danny and then herself in the line fire with someone so unstable. They could both be under a sheet right now. Danny had not flown across the goddamn ocean to miss out on his daughter's childhood because someone else didn't know to ask for help or look before crossing. There was heat behind his eyelids, the headache throbbing merrily in time with his breaths. He vaguely processed Steve making some conjecture about Hesse coming in with the traffickers, face already set, jaw tight like she was starring in her very own Apocalypse Now. God he didn't need this right now.

"Hey _hey_ how about a thank you for saving your life, huh?"

Her features arranged themselves in a glare that was one part incredulous and one part pissed off—furrowed brow, thin lips, narrowed eyes, the whole works.

"You shot my only lead!"

"Who was going to shoot _you_ , asshole!"

That got him a look that should have cut him down where he stood. McGarret started to elaborate, each word dropping crisp like a shot. As soon as the name Hesse left her mouth, Danny could see it, the brittle rage, the lines at her eyes. This was a woman who'd never left the war zone.

"You took a stupid risk," he broke in, gentler than he meant when he was this mad. "I'm not getting myself killed for your vendetta, okay? I have a daughter."

McGarrett still looked like she was ready to storm the battlements. Unbelievable. Danny saves her from a bullet in the chest, and she's geared to go against _him_.

"That's someone's daughter too, Danny. You ever think about that?"

"Oh I'm sorry, I didn't know we were in a Lifetime movie, McGarrett."

That got her right in his face, clear eyes bright with whatever fuel had kept her from dropping, and he was reminded she had a shade of height on him, no heels necessary like Rachel, who had liked to play that little trick on him from time to time.

"You think this is a joke, Detective?"

And no way was Danny letting her take the high ground on this one. "I think that for someone who just lost her father, you're being pretty stupid here. You think he'd have been good watching you get dropped by scum like Doran?"

She showed her teeth, a line of tension visible in her jaw.

"You don't talk about my father." Danny knew better than to touch that nest of vipers.

"Look, McGarrett, I'm just saying there's procedure to be followed."

"Procedure means that girl is still chained to a pipe, on her way to—"

"I know, McGarrett. Do not,” he paused for a angry breath, “question my resolve." Danny ground his palms into his eyes, forgetting the graze until it unceremoniously reminded him of its presence with a red stretch of heat.

She sounded so sure of herself, every detail glossed over in the name of some crusade that had nothing to do with the reality of getting things done. Danny had always hated working with Feds, who tended to cast every case in their own big-screen production. He should probably be dropping to the ground in thanks that he'd rarely had to deal with this military spook crap.

"Charging in like that doesn't always solve the case, okay? Sometimes it just gets you killed, gets your _partner_ , who has a kid I might remind you, killed."

Danny would have called the set of her mouth mulish if it hadn't been for the clear murder in her eyes. Was she really going to stonewall him? Not cop to the pure idiocy what she did? He took a step closer, wanting to make a bigger point.

"One warning," and Christ that was all ice in her voice, "take your finger out of my face. She'd crossed her arms, closing Danny off, and he had to squelch the urge to wave the offending digit right in her eyes. Who did she think she was? Being the governor's favorite toy didn't give her the run of the island. He didn't back up a step.

"Listen to me, you crazy—"

Ground and sky flipped, his shoulder screamed, and McGarrett wasn't crossing her arms anymore. It took Danny a second to figure out that she was the solid line of heat behind him. He experimentally flexed his shoulders, trying to wrestle up from the ground, but she had all the leverage, the hold she'd managed clean as a whistle and airtight.

"Get the hell off of me." A hush had settled over the scene, and Danny could see a handful of HPD officers approaching with hands over their holsters. God, he finally understood Rachel's wordless frustration and vague humiliation they fought in public. It wasn't like Danny was flying particularly high in the eyes of the HPD to start with. He was willing to bet that getting wrestled to the ground like a recalcitrant calf by a woman, even a woman who was probably certified to do some damage in the world's most dangerous hot spots, was not going to bag him any gold stars. He struggled again, but she was locked in, unforgiving.

"Don't worry, officers." Danny had known this woman for less time than it had taken to deliver his daughter, and he could already envision the calculatedly charming smile she was wearing right now, all confidence and 'who, me?' wide eyes. He saw the uniforms back off out of the corner of his eyes, vainly trying to blow stray strands of hair out of his face.

McGarrett leaned down low so that Danny could feel the heat of her body through thin fabric. His heart rate unfairly stuttered for a moment before he realized that she was getting closer to his ear.

"Come on, in front of all these nice people." Like _Danny_ was the unreasonable one. He knew it was unhealthy constantly comparing other women to his ex-wife, but the icy reserve that cased McGarrett's voice was classic Rachel. She was seething underneath, he could tell, ready to rip him a new one as soon as there weren't witnesses. And Christ, the proximity and the clear irritation should not have gone straight to his dick. So much for moving on. He had to remind himself that he'd just been _shot_ , thank you very much.

"You don't have to like me, Detective, but you should know that I'm the only one who'll get the job done."

The line sounded familiar and worn on her tongue, like she'd had to pull it out countless times before. And Danny got it, he did, being belittled and underestimated and pushed aside, except the normal populace didn't respond by behaving like an _insane_ person.

"Okay, okay," he allowed. "Let me up."

To McGarrett's credit, she only gave him a moment's look of suspicion before releasing her hold. She actually looked relieved, in an infuriatingly condescending way that suggested she was glad Danny was through with his foolishness. The woman was some sort of high-functioning robot.

Danny had a passel of younger sisters and what Rachel had, affectionately or with a sneer, depending on when you asked her, called an overdeveloped sense of chivalry. He'd been hardwired not to touch a girl, not in the school yard, where you gained nothing and potentially lost face, and not with the force, where, sure, the female perps needed rough handling just as much as the male ones, but you didn't enjoy it.

McGarrett had, in the space of a day, insulted his place, his clothes, and his hair. She'd obstructed his investigation, gone over his head to _steal_ his investigation, and then commandeered him from what had finally been shaping up into a pretty stable routine. She was currently thoroughly humiliating him in front of uniforms he'd have to order around tomorrow and had just neatly wrapped up implying that Danny supported human trafficking.

She took the punch like a pro, rolling back up almost in a single motion. Danny waited for the self-revulsion, the feeling that he'd just shattered some unbroken rule, even his mother's voice admonishing him to treat a lady like a lady, Daniel. Whatever protective instinct was supposed to be kicking in was content to stay inert. Steve barely looked phased. She looked like she could take about twenty more punches and still dismantle Danny in three moves. It was the uniforms he had to worry about, all rushing in as soon as knuckles collided with cheekbone. There was one at his elbow with cuffs clinking before McGarrett got her hands up. She was still rubbing her face gingerly but there were the beginnings of a wicked grin playing about her mouth. Insane.

"Everything's under control, folks."

She swept her eyes both ways as a dismissal. The uniform who'd been ready to drag Danny off didn't look convinced, but he settled for a glare before moving off. Unbelievable.

McGarrett leveled an amused gaze at him. "You should be careful hitting a woman in public, Detective Williams."

And that really should not have gotten his dick interested in anything, not with a gunshot wound that looked like a bloody bite, a sore arm, and a definitively less stable working situation.

"Like you couldn't take me out in two seconds with some Krav Maga shit."

He cut off the smile that was clearly bubbling up under the burgeoning bruise.

"And for the record, you're right. I don't like you."

She just smirked in response, not even bothering to rub her face and acknowledge that Danny had done any damage at all.

There was a little maneuvering for the car door that Danny was still stung over. McGarrett moved with the kind of deliberation that suggested oh of course she was going to drive Danny's car despite the fact that she gotten him shot—she was the better driver, didn't you know? No he did _not_ know, since it was _his_ goddamn car, and he'd had enough violation of Williams sovereignty thank you. He was happy to let the awkward silence molder on a little bit, trying to avoid the unfortunately compelling sight of McGarrett in what was apparently her usual sprawl, long legs crowded in front of her, curl of dark hair licking a sooty line across one athletically golden shoulder. What did Danny do to deserve this?

"You know, I think I know why your wife left you, Williams."

Oh he couldn't _wait_ to hear this. He focused on not crashing them into the Pacific.

"You're too sensitive."

Too _sensitive_? It was exactly the sort of emasculating barb Rachel had loved to launch in the waning years. Man up, Daniel, where's that swagger? He could feel the lava boiling over in his chest like some kind of screwed up Pavlovian reaction.

By the time he'd gotten through the indignity of the bullet wound, his general malcontent with jellyfish, and his theory on modern civilization, McGarrett had sarcastically apologized about five times. He allowed that the last one sounded relatively sincere. When he looked away from the road, there was something surprisingly soft about the smile that lifted one corner of her mouth, like she was remembering something funny. She was focused again in an instant though, directing Danny through the turn with the imperiousness of a reigning queen.

“Why?” He knew he was being a little childish, but he couldn’t bring himself to be complacent. The thought made him want to yank on her hair until she went the way he wanted her to. He reassured himself that that was a one hundred percent adult thought to have under trying circumstances.

“I think I know someone who can help us.”

\--

“Someone” had shoulders that longed for the weight of a real uniform. He'd rarely seen a man look more out of place than Chin Ho Kelly in his Rent-a-cop getup. He was solid as a rock, all ramrod posture and drawn brows that rose into his hairline when McGarrett slid into the bench.

"What happened to _you_ , McGarrett?"

Danny's clothes suddenly felt a whole lot more restrictive. He considered it a moral victory that he did not start juggling his foot anxiously. He hadn't really noticed in the car, when he'd been glancing over angrily every couple minutes anyway, but his love tap had darkened into an impressive bruise that sat right over the crest of one sharp cheekbone, bleeding a little dark into the soft pit of her cheek, as tender looking as Steve's bitten mouth. It took up more of her face than Danny would have guessed. He hadn't pulled it, but he was shot up and hadn't exactly been whaling on her either.

McGarrett just smirked, one corner of her mouth lifting into the bruise, and the moment passed.

"Hazards of the job, brah."

Chin flicked an unreadable glance at Danny but submitted easily enough to her rapid-fire questions. He only got tense again when Steve extended her metaphorical hand, clear eyes surprisingly earnest, mouth set stubbornly.

Chin's 'I'm busy' was so weak that Danny had to chime in. Keeping the man here was like harnessing a thoroughbred to a plow. He wasn't budging though, even when McGarrett got in his face about it, arms tensed like statuary, muscles pulled taut as wire.

"Why do you trust me?"

The question was so naked that Danny felt like he shouldn't have been there at all. The situation had gone from recon stop to something else entirely. He checked himself, kept his eyes on McGarrett's face. The bruise made her eyes a little darker when they were that intent, but there was no fragility there, only hawkish purpose. Any softness was in the way she hesitated when looking back at Chin, just a moment but enough to throw the tough girl facade into doubt.

"Because my old man did."

Her voice was as arrow-sharp as Danny had ever heard it, and she was staring at Chin like he held every secret she'd ever wondered about. Danny did not blame the man for giving in, not one bit. He thought of the photographs of Jack McGarrett nestled in his file, lines of police jargon that were supposed to represent a human being. He wondered what Steve was remembering about her father, if he'd been gentle with her as a kid (man didn't seem the type, but you never knew), if he'd looked forward to each weekend, if he'd brushed the hair back from her face before school so he could keep the softness of a stray strand in his fingers long after they'd parted ways. Whatever she thought, it was all there in her face.

Chin was apparently fluent because Danny took one look at him and knew that the battle had been lost for them.

\--


End file.
